Artificial intelligence is here and will not disappear. So, either adapt or remain in the past. This line is spoken by one of the characters in the series *Desperate Writers*—and the female protagonist immediately brings it down: That very enforced inevitability is one of the reasons I won't embrace it. People who push for technology do not give others a chance to decide. They simply present us with a fait accompli—whether you like it or not, it is happening. And that is, in essence, coercion.

This exchange captures the tension that has permeated the art world since the early 1920s. Around 2021, when the first image generators entered public space, the impact on the visual arts scene was immediate. The models of that time produced distorted hands, bizarre anatomical proportions, and mechanically sterile outputs—results that were easy to identify. By 2026, the situation is radically different: GPT Image 2 from OpenAI offers significantly improved photorealism compared to its predecessors, precise handling of complex prompts, and consistent outputs across a set of generated images. [Source: Gradually AI, May 2026] Today, I must zoom in to distinguish whether a photograph was taken by a human or generated by an algorithm in four and a half seconds. The technological leap in just four years is dizzying.

New Tool, Old Fear

Fear of new technology is nothing extraordinary in history. The invention of the printing press threatened scribes. Photography was said to have "killed" painting. Digital music production put entire orchestras out of work. In every case, it turned out that technology transformed methods of creation without destroying art as such. AI image generators, music models, or language tools have a chance to become what the computer became for graphic designers or the electric guitar for musicians—a means that expands possibilities, not replaces creators.

Art's Crisis Preceded AI

It would be too easy to place all the blame on algorithms. Art has grappled with existential questions long before the arrival of machine learning. From Greek classics, through Renaissance masters to mastery, cubism, dadaism, and conceptual art of the twentieth century—each epoch tested the boundaries of media, form, and meaning. Today's visual arts scene itself admits that it suffers from exhaustion of forms. Moreover, art has never been purely autonomous: it has always been tied to commerce, patronage, fashion, political commissions. These pressures existed a century before ChatGPT. And fundamentally: AI can combine and vary patterns that already exist. But expanding the boundaries of art—seeking new meaning, asking uncomfortable questions, responding to specific human experience—remains the prerogative of humans.

The Choice Never Disappears

The protagonist from the series was right in one thing: the feeling of coercion is real. But that does not imply we are powerless. People paint with watercolors, photograph on film, play acoustic instruments—not because digital alternatives do not exist, but because they value the process itself. Creation is not just about the result. It is about concentration, about searching, about the moment when hand, mind, and material meet in something that cannot be delegated. In an era of algorithmic efficiency, conscious slowing down and manual work can be a form of resistance—and of freedom.

Until the Panic Subsides

Once the initial wave of panic subsides, more serious questions arise. In 2023, visual artists filed class-action lawsuits against companies like Stability AI, Midjourney, and others; in August 2024, the court ruled that their claims of copyright infringement could proceed—although the issue of "fair use" remains open. [Source: Brookings Institution, October 2025] Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case regarding copyright protection for works created solely by AI—thus affirming that purely machine-generated creations are not protected by copyright. [Source: Futurism, March 2026]

These are the questions that deserve our attention—how to protect original creators, how to define the boundaries of fair use, how to preserve space for creation that is not optimized but alive, in an era of efficiency. Not as a response to fear, but as a conscious choice by people who have decided not to remain passive observers of the changing world.

NNela.Ni

Sources and materials used:

• OpenAI GPT Image 2: Gradually AI (May 2026), Build Fast With AI (April 22, 2026)

• Andersen v. Stability AI: Brookings Institution (October 2025), NYU JIPEL (December 2024)

• U.S. Supreme Court — AI copyright: Futurism (March 2026)